Global Supply Chain Crisis or Thriving Local Economies Crisis?
by Marc Brown, Director, People’s Food Co-op Board
November 2022
Lately, I have been thinking about shoes. Stick with me on this one. Before the industrial revolution, every town had a cordwainer, a person who made shoes (most people mistakenly call a shoemaker a cobbler but, in fact, a cobbler is someone who repairs shoes). The cordwainer had a small shop in town where they made and sold shoes. They were likely assisted by family members and apprentices and likely lived in a small apartment above the shop. The cordwainer bought leather from a local farmer and nails and tools from a local blacksmith. After the industrial revolution, cordwainers disappeared and “shoe manufacturers” appeared. Shoe factories were built throughout the country and, eventually, the manufacturing moved overseas.
People’s Food Cooperative has a “Global End” statement as part of our policies. The Global End statement is our aspirational goal, the place on the horizon towards which we navigate:
“A passionate community working together for sustainability, progressive land and animal stewardship, human rights, and social and economic justice.”
A subpart of our Global End is, “Thriving Cooperative and Local Economies.” By supporting and encouraging cooperative and local economies, we move towards that point on the horizon. But what does it mean to support and encourage thriving, cooperative and local economies?
People’s is a grocery store--our grocery store. We, the owners, have instructed the Collective Management, the collective of staff who operate our store, to support cooperative and local economies by nestling these words in our Global End. But why does that matter? In this age of online commerce, when someone with a device can order nearly anything from anywhere and have it appear on their doorstep within a few days, why does it even matter if we have a local economy?
Throughout the past two and a half years, we have seen the ugly effects of the global economy. During the first year of the pandemic, we saw families understandably turning to online retailers to purchase good that had previously been purchased from local businesses, to safeguard their health. The result was the loss of many locally run establishments, some of which had been in business for decades. Suddenly, as we emerge from our pandemic bunkers, we notice many empty storefronts where our favorite stores had been located. Now, the only places to purchase those goods are through online retailers who, in turn, purchase goods from far away manufacturers. A direct result is that that money does not become re-circulated in the local economy, but is dispersed across a supply chain across multiple continents.
Then, we saw the crisis in global shipping. Because demand for goods from across vast oceans was so great in the United States, our ports could no longer handle the volume. Massive ships packed with thousands of shipping containers (the average container ship can hold 15,000 shipping containers and some up to 60,000 containers) waited for weeks in harbors for a spot in the port to unload their goods.
Overall, this has been called the “global supply chain crisis.” However, a more accurate term is the “Thriving Local Economy Crisis.” The global supply chain deteriorates thriving, local, and cooperative businesses. If our local economies were thriving, whether the global supply chain was in crisis would not have such a dramatic and noticeable effect on us.
This, of course, brings us back to our little grocery store. The Collective Management strives to purchase as much of the goods it sells from local producers. Of course, “local” is a relative term and necessarily so. I have not seen a grapefruit tree in the Portland area (although the way things are moving, in a hundred years or so we may yet see a thriving local grapefruit crop). But much of the produce carried by People’s is from our local “foodshed.” In 2021, they sourced farm-direct from 33 farms in Oregon and Washington, representing 26% of the co-op’s produce sales for the year. Produce sourced from our local food-shed (Oregon and Washington) accounted for 57% of total produce sales in 2021. Produce from Oregon farms alone accounted for 68% of local food-shed produce sales and 39% of total produce sales. Much of the dairy products People’s sells are from the region, the tofu is produced by Ota Tofu located a few miles away from the store, and really anything that our store sells that is grown or manufactured in the region is purchased locally or regionally. For example, People’s Product Selection Guidelines for produce department states, “People’s produce buyers endeavor to promote local, sustainable farming by maintaining a network of growers who sell produce directly to the co-op.” In fact, nearly every department includes local products as a criteria whenever possible.
Sourcing directly from local farmers and food-makers is one of the reasons why People’s, unlike many large grocery stores, has not seen empty shelves over the past year. By supporting local businesses, our store is helping to ensure that our community is not as reliant upon the global supply chain. We are fortunate to live in a region of abundance. And, while it is true that many items we purchase are not produced in our country, we can build up our local economy. People’s places that purpose front and center of everything we do. Our little grocery store does what it can to be a bridge between local producers and local consumers.
Which brings us back to the cordwainer. Oregon does still have a few cordwainers but the days of a thriving local shoemaking economy is long gone. If we want shoes, we can no longer purchase locally produced shoes. However, we can ensure that the thriving local economy continues to thrive, we can strive to support parts of our local economy that are struggling, and, perhaps, we can look to rebuild the lost local economies. When that happens, our region will no longer be as reliant upon the global supply chain as we are today. That is why “Thriving Cooperative and Local Economies” is something we, the owners of People’s Food Cooperative, aspire to sustain.
